New York (AFP)
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, including slaughterhouses and air transport, more and more American companies are deciding to impose vaccination on their employees, even if it means firing them.
The CNN news channel thus dismissed three employees who had violated its health policy by coming to work without being immunized against Covid-19.
"Let me be clear: we have a zero tolerance policy in this regard," wrote CNN Chairman Jeff Zucker in a memo tweeted Thursday by a reporter for the channel.
Companies have generally hesitated for a long time.
United Airlines boss Scott Kirby said in January that he was considering imposing the vaccine injection on all employees based in the United States.
It was only on Friday that he finally asked 67,000 employees to be vaccinated by the end of October.
"We know that some of you will not agree with this decision," he wrote in a message co-signed with the head of public affairs of the company.
"But our biggest responsibility is to keep you safe at work and the facts are clear: Everyone is safer when everyone is vaccinated."
Employers have the right to require their employees traveling to their workplace to be vaccinated, with medical exceptions, according to the US Federal Agency for Enforcement of Laws Against Discrimination in the Workplace (EEOC) or religious objection.
CNN was, if the terms were well laid out in the contract, in the right to fire employees who did not obey the rules, according to Eric Feldman, specialist in health law at the University of Pennsylvania.
The CNN logo in Westerville, October 15, 2019 SAUL LOEB AFP / Archives
"Putting yourself in danger by not getting vaccinated is unwise, but putting others at risk is clearly unethical and in many cases illegal," he notes.
- Political opposition -
On Wall Street, which has long pushed employees to return to the office, investment bank Morgan Stanley and asset manager BlackRock had indicated in June that only vaccinated employees would have access to their premises.
In Silicon Valley, Google, Facebook and Microsoft have made similar decisions in recent days.
The meat giant Tyson Foods for its part announced Tuesday that the vaccine would be mandatory for all its employees, in offices and slaughterhouses, on November 1.
With the explosion of contaminations linked to the Delta variant, "it is the right time to take the next step," said Claudia Coplein, chief medical officer of the company.
Slightly less than half of Tyson Foods employees have so far been vaccinated, following the country's average: the White House announced on Friday that half of the American population is now fully vaccinated.
Companies "were waiting to see how many employees would get vaccinated themselves first," said Peter Capelli, professor of management at Wharton School.
If some companies are still reluctant to impose the serum, it is mainly for political reasons according to him: "there are so many people who now think that it is legitimate to oppose the vaccine, that the employers fear to run up against political opposition ".
Walmart, for example, the country's largest private employer, has made it mandatory for head office employees, but not for those in supermarkets and warehouses.
But "these stores are mainly in rural areas where the anti-vaccine forces are more significant", remarks Mr. Capelli.
While it is currently complicated to recruit in certain sectors, especially at the lowest wages, employers do not want to take the risk of rejecting potential employees.
"We hoped that we would now be out of this mess," said Michael Orban of the School of Health Sciences at New Haven University.
"But that's not yet the case because a lot of people don't trust the system."
Now that some large companies have cleared the ground a bit, others should follow suit, he predicts.
But for small companies struggling to survive while having to keep abreast of rule changes, it would be easier in his eyes for authorities to make the decision to impose the vaccine on everyone.
© 2021 AFP